Creative Computing Club electrifies and wins awards!!!

July / August 2019

Electronics and Arduino Hacking Evening Courses

One of the best things about having our own centre is that we can do big electronics projects and learn new skills like soldering, something we were keen to take immediate
advantage of with our second course in our new building. We had several people soldering for the first time, overcoming their fears and learning new skills. Our youngest solderer was just 8-years-old
so it was important to teach them how to do it calmly and safely and it was real success for the young people involved.

BAFTA YGD Awards, June 29th 2019

At the very end of June, Matthew was invited to BAFTA in London as a Young Game Designer Mentor Award Nominee and won!!! Winning the award has opened a lot of doors for the Creative Computing Club and considerably raise our profile as an organisation. It was a great event to attend, and we have made a lot more connections
with the games industry, which will further benefit the young people we work with.

As promised Matthew then toured the award around all the schools he works in for all 320 of
the students he works with at Ipswich Academy, Causton Juniors, Colneis Juniors, Trimley St. Martin, Handford Hall Primary, Halifax Primary and Farligaye High School.

Creative Computing Club Summer Games Week

We had a fantastic games week over the summer full of gaming and competitions as well as game making. We were very fortunate to try out Dreams from our new friends Media Molecule, that we made at BAFTA
Vacation Simulator on PSVR and a lot of Minecraft.

It was a fantastic week, and I am genuinely grateful to all our contributors as our young people got to experience a wide range of job
roles of work within the digital sector from 3D modelling to Alexa skills, from Network Monitoring to ideation and planning of software.
We hope to return later in the year with a follow-up skills week with even more hands-on experience of different digital skills.

Creative Computing Club VIP Microsoft Visit (July 7th, 2019)

Members of the Creative Computing Club were very fortunate to have a VIP visit to the flagship Microsoft store, before it opened to the public.
They got to try out a number of games and driving simulators as well as use the updated version of the Hololens.

They also got to try out a Forza Simulator inside an actual Blue McClaren Senna and they were very happy about that.

Monthly Adult Evening Sessions

We have started a Monthly Adult Evening Sessions once a month and we are now on our third session. The two sessions we offered in July / August were Robotics and Electronics. The sessions explored the fundamentals of what is
happening in the field of Robotics and we learnt to program a servo with an Arduino. The other was basic electronics where we created a simple music synthesizer and soldered a simple circuit.

We'll be offering more one-off sessions in the future (usually on the third monday of the month) so subscribe to our twitter page or Facebook page to keep updated.

Ipswich Game Development Meetup

Years ago the Creative Computing Club ran the Ipswich Game Developer Network or "IGDN" so we were keen to restart the Game Development Networking once we had the perfect building to host the event in.

In the three months we have been running it
we have increased in numbers and had special guests sucah as Paul Hutson of Kingdom Game, Andy Payne of British E-sports Association and Samuel Read from Rebelephant.
The group is growing and we have some exciting guest speakers lined up for the future.

If you want to stay in the loop and attend future events check out the Meetup Group here.

We will have lots of new courses listed soon, join the Facebook Page to get regular updates and
be sure to check out our Upcoming Courses page and enrol early to avoid disappointment.

Creative Computing Club looks to the past and the future!!!

May / June 2019

History, Design & Development of Video Games

Through May and June, our evening classes looked over the History, Design & Development of Video Games from 1947 to the present day, discussing the
hardware innovations and designs styles that dominated different eras of gaming. Each week we picked one game from the period to
recreate which had us re-making PONG, Space Invaders, Pac-Man (Atari 2600) and Space Harrier to name just a few.

It was a perfect extension of the retro games wee we ran over the half-term break, and it allowed the young people to understand the
constraints the developers of the day had to work with and allowed them to appreciate just how much work went into early game development.

It was a fantastic week, and I am genuinely grateful to all our contributors as our young people got to experience a wide range of job
roles of work within the digital sector from 3D modelling to Alexa skills, from Network Monitoring to ideation and planning of software.
We hope to return later in the year with a follow-up skills week with even more hands-on experience of different digital skills.

Farlingaye High School

If May and June the students from Farlingaye High School began learning about robotics in a multi-school collaboration building the sensor elements for the robot hands for use in the sessions
with Halifax Primary School, Causton, Coneis & Trimley St. Martin and Handford Hall Primary.

They will be moving on to the robotics with a special project from Microsoft.

Halifax Primary School

The students from Halifax Primary School started to build the glove elements of the Microsoft Hacking STEM robotic hand which can be viewed here.

Causton, Coneis & Trimley St. Martin

The wonderful students at Causton Juniors, Colneis Juniors and Trimley St. Martin had a great time discussing the type of robots they would like to see in the world and discussed
what jobs could be replaced and what jobs should be replaced by robots.

Handford Hall Primary

The students at Handford Hall Primary got a closer look at how their hands work and discussed how we might build robotic hands in the future.

We will have lots of new courses listed soon, join the Facebook Page to get regular updates and
be sure to check out our Upcoming Courses page and enrol early to avoid disappointment.

Creative Computing Club opens the Creative Computing Centre!

March / April 2019

We closed the doors to Creative Computing Club in March and April to deliver our biggest project yet, the Creative Computing Centre.
A two story centre dedicated to computing in all its forms. The building required a small amount of redecorating and needed a bit of infrastructure
in place to make it into Suffolks best computing centre for young people. As it was our space we were allowed to decorate how we wanted it and used this opportunity to subtley
make references to our favourite video game consoles with our choices of colour. We had a lot of help from the Creative Computing Club members and their parents and we are
really grateful for this as it allowed us to get things done so much faster. With all the work completed we let the fun begin.

For our opening week we allowed our existing members take part in our first ever "MEGA RETRO GAME EASTER WEEK" featuring over 30 retro consoles and 300 games!!!
It was great fun and lead nicely into our next course which is the "History, Design & Development of Video Games".

With our building fully BETA tested we are now ready to open the doors to the Creative Computing Centre.

Farlingaye High School

If March and April the students from Farlingaye High School thoroughly enjoyed their VR experience learning about the different aspects of design and development.

They will be moving on to the robotics with a special project from Microsoft.

Ipswich Academy

The students from Ipswich Academy got to try out the latest VR tech in their enhanced curriculum sessions and learned a lot about
how the systems may be used in other areas beside video gaming.

They too will be moving on to the robotics with a special project from Microsoft.

Causton, Coneis & Trimley St. Martin

The wonderful students at Causton Juniors, Colneis Juniors and Trimley St. Martin had a wonderful time learning about code and generative computer art. Using the fantastic P5JS
language which is based on Processing. In the sessions they were able to create art based on different rules and algorithms.

Handford Hall Primary

The students at Handford Hall Primary got to a sneak peak behind the making of a commercial video game and even got to rewrite parts of it and build their own levels. They learnt
a lot about what makes a good game and the different roles available to them in the games industry.

We will have lots of new courses listed soon, join the Facebook Page to get regular updates and
be sure to check out our Upcoming Courses page and enrol early to avoid disappointment.

Creative Computing Club kicks off the new year in style!

January / February 2019

It has been a wonderful two months at Creative Computing Club, and we have gotten a lot done. The main four groups focused on web
development in preparation for learning about cloud services in 2019. They also took part in another 10hr Gaming Marathon to raise
money for Suffolk Mind raising over £300 pounds, and you can still donate here. The students of Farlingaye High School, Handford Hall
Primary School, Halifax Primary School, Causton Juniors, Colneis Juniors, and Trimley St. Martin are still working with us on projects,
and we are looking forward to adding Abbots Hall Primary School to the schools we work with in January.

We were also fortunate enough to take 15 of our young people to Microsofts Headquarters in Reading for a unique Microsoft experience Day where they got to code with some of the cybersecurity team, have a Q&A with the Minecraft developers and hear from the senior staff what their journey with Microsoft has been like.
It was inspirational, and the young people involved embraced the challenges and opportunities.

The Creative Computing Club CIC also published its second Impact Report which can be read here (3.5MB), and we are very pleased with how far we have come. In 2019 we will be making some fantastic announcements with new services that we will be offering in Suffolk.

Causton Juniors

The students from Causton Juniors, Colneis Juniors and Trimley St. Martin have been building IoT apps using the BBC Micro to detect temperatures in the playground. They will be moving on to generative computer art using
Processing in March.

They will be moving on to the fundamentals of Python in the next course, making simple games and some beginner data analysis.

Handford Hall Primary School

Handford Hall Primary School have finished BETA testing their video game and have moved on to creating some amazing generative computer art
using Processing which is inspiring them to create more traditional art outside of the computer room.

Halifax Primary School

Halifax Primary School have been using the graphics assets from Ubisofts Starlink to learn the fundamentals of game programming building a space shooter game in the process. They will be moving on to use the
BBC Microbit to create apps in March.

Farlingaye High School

Farlingaye High School have been learning hardware programming using the Arduino system building projects such as a fridge alarm which triggers an alarm
when opened during certain hours as well as a musical jukebox.

We will be making a huge announcement early March so stay tuned to social media to get the latest news.
We will have lots of new courses listed soon, join the Facebook Page to get regular updates and
be sure to check out our Upcoming Courses page and enrol early to avoid disappointment.

Creative Computing Club wins UK Youth Hub of the Year 2018!

November / December 2018

It has been a wonderful two months at Creative Computing Club, and we have gotten a lot done. The main four groups focused on web
development in preparation for learning about cloud services in 2019. They also took part in another 10hr Gaming Marathon to raise
money for Suffolk Mind raising over £300 pounds, and you can still donate here. The students of Farlingaye High School, Handford Hall
Primary School, Halifax Primary School, Causton Juniors, Colneis Juniors, and Trimley St. Martin are still working with us on projects,
and we are looking forward to adding Abbots Hall Primary School to the schools we work with in January.

The Creative Computing Club CIC also published its second Impact Report which can be read here (3.5MB), and we are very pleased with how far we have come. In 2019 we will be making some fantastic announcements with new services that we will be offering in Suffolk.

The Stowmarket group were taken through Arduino basics at our new Stowmarket base at Orbital Media and made some fantastic gadgets.

They will be moving on to the fundamentals of Python in the next course, making simple games and some beginner data analysis.

The Under 12's did a half-terms worth of Scratch learning the basics and some of the new features included in Scratch 3 coming out in January. They made some amazing games and discovered a lot in the process.

They will be moving on to the fundamentals of Processing in the new year making simple apps and learning loads about generative computer art.

Creative Computing Club at Ipswich Academy

We have been working with 20 young people from Ipswich Academy since September providing an after school club for their students in which time they have built a video game using game maker and learnt the fundamentals of computer programming using Processing.

Next half-term we are going to look at generative computer art and further extend their knowledge of computer programming before moving on to Virtual reality and Arduino programming..

Sony Digital Schoolhouse

As the Creative Computing Club CIC is a Sony PlayStation Digital Schoolhouse, we were able to run a special project using the Starlink game assets. Starlink is a commercially available
game and using the game assets allowed the young people to focus on the code and make some great additions. You can read our full blog on it here with game resources.

In total the Creative Computing Club CIC worked with over 320 young people across Suffolk. Thanks to Digital Schoolhouse and Ubisoft UK for making it possible.

UK Youth Hub of the Year 2018

In partnership with UK Youth the Creative Computing Club CIC has worked with over 200 young people providing an introduction to
programming sessions, and as a special treat, we were invited to the Microsoft Reactor in London to meet up with other hubs from
around the UK and take part in a special hack day.

While we were there, we were awarded the UK Youth Hub of the Year 2018 from Microsoft. We look forward to working with them
again in 2019 and visiting the Microsoft head office in Reading.

We will be making a huge announcement mid-February so stay tuned to social media to get the latest news.
We will have lots of new courses listed soon, join the Facebook Page to get regular updates and
be sure to check out our Upcoming Courses page and enrol early to avoid disappointment.

Creative Computing Club and the start of a new (Academic) year!

September / October 2018

It has been an intense start to the new academic year the Creative Computing Club CIC has become and official Alternative Provision
for Suffolk County Council and we are now working with several schools all across Suffolk working with over 300 young people a week to provide worthwhile
and engaging digital skills.

Our Tuesday and Wednesday evening courses learnt about Virtual Reality
and the different types of experiences available through it. From "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes", "Beat Saber", "SuperHot" and iKinema Orion full body-motion capture with the HTC Vive Trackers. It was a bit of
a treat to try out incredibly expensive, and cutting-edge tech at the start of a new term before they crack on with the hard work of web development with AWS Educate in November and December.

The Under 12's did a half-terms worth of BBC Microbit, using it to create a rock paper scissor game (on the left), a compass, a music player and a calculator. They even used apples
to create a fruit-based musical keyboard (on the right).This was the first course where we ran two groups of Under 12s, and already we are at capacity. They are great fun to work with and have some of the most imaginative ideas for the uses of technology.

For their next course, they will be going on to learn about all the new features in Scratch 3.0, which looks great and has added loads of useful and interesting extras.

Farlingaye Highschool, Woodbridge

Farlingaye High School located in Woodbridge has just short of 2000 pupils, and we are fortunate enough to work with twenty of them this first half-term, learning about video game design and what the implications are for different areas of technology in the future.

Next half-term we are going on to computer programming using python to build various types of applications even further to enhance their understanding of technology and their digital skills.

Their games will be available to play and will be featured in the next blog.

Handford Hall Primary, Ipswich

Handford Hall Primary School in Ipswich a wonderful little school of 355 pupils and we are working with 30 of them to bring their video game ideas to life, using both offline and online resources.

It was a really lovely experience to see the way they view video game narratives and to hear them discuss their ideas for the games they are making; they were very professional especially for such a young age.

Their games will be available to play and will be featured in the next blog.

Halifax Primary, Ipswich

Halifax Primary School in Ipswich has just over 400 pupils, and we are working with just under 60 of them to bring a massive video game to life. Week in and week out we have seen some fantastic ideas come to life and seen iteration after iteration of improvement to their game ideas
not only visually but also the complex narratives that they are building around their games.

We have been using a lot of "Computing Unplugged" concepts with them which we learnt from Sony and the Digital School sessions in London to maximise the pupils use of computing time.

Their games will be available to play and will be featured in the next blog.

Causton Juniors, Colneis Juniors & Trimley St. Martin, Felixstowe

With just under 800 pupils between the three schools and with them so close geographically we decided to make it a collaborative effort between the three schools working with 60 pupils.

It has been a real team effort, so much work has been achieved in such a short period of time, and they have been amazing at discussing their ideas and presenting them to others.

Their games will be available to play and will be featured in the next blog.

We have also been fortunate enough to start work with Ipswich Academy with a year long project funded by the Ipswich Borough Councils Area Committees and we will be talking about this on our next blog. Apologies for the latest of the blog but as you can see we have been quite busy.

We will have lots of new courses listed soon, join the Facebook Page to get regular updates and
be sure to check out our Upcoming Courses page and enrol early to avoid disappointment.

Creative Computing Club and the summer of Artificial Intelligence

July / August 2018

We had a great summer and we covered a lot during our July / August courses; Artificial Intelligence, Game Making, Animation
and more. Our Ipswich and Campsea Ashe groups looked at how neural nets work and finished off their courses with a hands-on experience IBM Watson to build
a chatbot.

We had a our annual games week and got to try out the Microsoft Hololens thanks to Orbital Media as well as the new Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. We also had a lot of nostalgia after playing Wii Sports Resort and Minecraft throughout the week.

The Creative Computing Club took part in the Ludum Dare 42 producing loads of interesting games based around the theme of "Running Out of Space".
We plan to take part in future Ludum Dare Games Jams as we had a lot of fun having to think fast to make a game in 48 hours.

The Friday Under 12's group has grown significantly and completed a course in animation making some amazing and hilarious animations.
They are going on to do a course using the BBC Microbit where they will be building interesting and useful apps for the fantastic little gadget.

The Monday Stowmarket group have completed their introduction to Game Maker and produced a lot of fantastic games and will shortly be moving
on to website development.

Over the summer we also ran twelve Generation Code sessions for UK Youth and Microsoft to encourage young people to try out coding, it was really good fun, and we think we have found a bunch of talented new coders.

Some of the older Creative Computing Club members who trained with UK Youth to become "Code Champions" were on hand to help out, and they did a fantastic job supporting the younger newer coders.

We are really grateful to More Bongo Limited, Sloan Squared and a number of other excellent local businesses generously purchased laptops on behalf of the Creative Computing Club allowing us to run the workshops for over 60 young people, who otherwise would not have been able to take part and for that we are genuinely grateful.

And last but not least a we were fortunate to write a guest blog for UKIE, Digital Schoolhouse you can read about it
here . We were
also recently interviewed by Tech East and you can read about that here.
It has been a busy couple of months but it is set to get even busier as the Creative Computing Club CIC has now been made an Alternative Provision by
the Suffolk County Council and we are set to begin work with eight new schools in Suffolk.

We will have lots of new courses listed soon, join the Facebook Page to get regular updates and
be sure to check out our Upcoming Courses page and enrol early to avoid disappointment.